


Company You Keep

by DontTapTheGlass



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Almost happy endings that go wrong, Angst, Character Study, Family, Multi, Not Really Character Death, The Doctor (Doctor Who) Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:33:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22059409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DontTapTheGlass/pseuds/DontTapTheGlass
Summary: Sometimes dying is easier than seeing them die.or: This is the one where no one leaves.
Relationships: Tenth Doctor & Companions, Tenth Doctor/Jack Harkness, Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Comments: 5
Kudos: 55





	Company You Keep

**Author's Note:**

> I will likely come back and edit this, but I am just missing the Tenth doctor's family right now.

There are so few people he could keep.

He sorts through the goodbyes, radiation destroying him from the outside in. He saves Martha, saves Mickey and Sarah Jane’s son, he slides a note to Jack, and then he is in the snow on the eve of 2005 watching Rose Tyler smile wide and poke fun.

The Tardis worries as he stumbles back in. Gold flickers about him, cells dying and being replaced already. He knows – he knows he will never see any of them again, somehow.

“Wouldn’t you like to hold on?”

The Doctor’s gaze shoots to the man leaning against the door. He wasn’t there a minute ago, the Doctor knows this. The short, bespectacled man frowns at him.

“Who are you?” the Doctor spits. “How did you get-“

Another burst of pain floods his system, nearly knocking him over as more gold drifts out of his skin. The other man sighs.

“More time. That’s all you want, am I right?” he asks.

“Wha-“ the Doctor can feel the regeneration coming quick. He takes a ragged breath.

“More time. No end.”

The Doctor looks from his gold swathed hands to the short man. He feels tears threatening to spill over his eyelids. His lips pull into a thin line.

He nods. “More time.”

This is the one where Rose stays.

At Canary Wharf there was a man and a woman and they opened the breach. And they won.

When the dust settled there was no more Jackie Tyler nor Mickey Smith, but there was one Rose Tyler and Doctor left clinging to each other in the aftermath. They laugh and sob and the Doctor holds her so tightly to his chest he expects to be nagged for squishing her.

They disappear into the Tardis before UNIT can come in for cleanup, before anyone can ask questions. The world is suddenly bright again, the hopelessness that had clutched him was gone.

They entered the time vortex, and really they were only planning on doing a little victory vacation, throwing time periods and planet names back and forth as they darted about the control room, but the Tardis had a knack for trouble, see.

There was the screaming bride – the woman who was so angry and so dense and Rose _adored_ her from the get-go. Donna Noble, who just wanted to get to her bloody wedding.

“Do you trust him?” Donna had asked Rose rather seriously somewhere between her almost being kidnapped by Santa Bot and showing up at her reception.

“With the whole universe,” Rose assured her. The Doctor felt his hearts beat a little faster.

There were robotic Santas and spiders, and, well, long story short they end up draining the Thames. The Empress screams, and Rose clutches onto Donna as the Doctor watches from above.

“Doctor, you can stop now,” Donna yells.

He stares at the destruction, the fires and waters and well.

He stops.

Donna doesn’t go with them when they leave, although they offer.

That night, Rose comes to his room where he never really sleeps and crawls into his bed, clings to his skinny frame and rests her head on his shoulder.

“Mercy, Doctor,” Rose whispers. “You need to remember to show mercy.”

And the Doctor shudders.

He expects years. He expects that if the breach couldn’t split them apart, nothing would. He depends on those years and makes a leap.

He takes her to Paris (the one on Vega 21) and kisses her in front of the New Eiffel Tower. She takes his hand and pulls him back into the Tardis, and then into her bedroom.

There is so much that could go wrong. This is what he wants to say when he wakes up beside her. He’s always been a coward. He’s never given himself so much to lose.

They dart between the stars, saving galaxies and meeting species he wasn’t sure existed and –

And they kiss and play domestic and plant seeds for forget-me-nots in the kitchen and –

And they visit moons and legends and fuck under the stars of alien nights and –

And he wants to say “This could hurt” and “There is so much that could go wrong” and –

And Rose sits the couch in the archives as she fiddles with some handheld video game device from the early 2200s, snuggled up against the Doctor. He brushes fingers through her hair and thinks maybe this could be the rest of his life. He would be so happy if this was the rest of his life.

They travel alone for about a year, but the Doctor has a bad habit of picking up strays. There’s the hospital that ends up on the moon and Rose almost bursts out laughing at the ‘rhinos in space suits’ (she really needs to watch what she says, he thinks) and that’s how they meet Martha.

So then there are three of them. They meet Shakespeare and save space ships and get lost on alien planets. Rose and Martha have an ongoing bet as of who can get hit on more (the Doctor very much does not like their bet, especially when they start including him in on it and counting every alien that checks him out). Martha pokes and prods him for stories, be it about past companions or other worlds or what Gallifrey used to be, and the Doctor finds the stories more healing than painful, which is a surprise to him. Rose decides she rather likes Martha.

He expects years.

But the problem, see, is that humans are meant to die. He expects years – decades and decades, but what he got instead was just under two.

It isn’t even something grand or magical or world ending – it isn’t some big sacrifice worthy of a life like hers, it’s just a bloody mistake. There’s a monster that can look human – that could be anyone, really, and they’re trapped on a ship flying towards a supernova. One of the members of the crew was on edge and he had a gun and – and –

He wasn’t even there.

He was in the engine room trying to get the ship’s steering back online with the main technician. He came back to the control room and Martha’s rigid demeanor and pesky tears had him on alert – and where was Rose wait where was Rose wait no what –

“Doctor, I – I’m so sorry,” Martha chokes out.

The Doctor looks around at the crew, looks at the blanket covered corpse in the corner. “Martha, c’mon, we’re leaving.”

And he carries her body to the Tardis, and they disappear into the stars. The ship burnt in the rays of the supernova. He drops Martha off on Earth.

He sits in the med bay for hours, staring blankly at the body of the woman he loved.

“More time?” came a familiar voice.

He looks to the short man in the corner, bespectacled and apologetic.

“I can’t give you more time with her, but the others, there will be others I can –“

“Will it hurt like this?” the Doctor asks, a tear sliding down his cheek. “Will she still die?”

The other man stares. “No. You won’t be able to see her, but she will live.”

The Doctor gently brushes a piece of hair from Rose’s cheek. “More time?”

“More time.”

This is the one where Martha stays.

Rose was safe in Pete’s world with her mother and Mickey, and the Doctor only had two minutes to say goodbye.

But then there was a screaming bride and it all ended the same and then there was Martha.

Martha who saved the world two dozen times in the first year of knowing her. Brilliant Martha who hated coming second to anyone, even the memory of someone already gone.

She is brave and she is strong and the year that wasn’t doesn’t even phase her. She gets angry at his sympathy for the Master – and oh, isn’t that new, not being the most hateful person on board? – but she stays. _She stays_.

She stays and becomes more copilot than companion, in the end. Donna comes on board, and she doesn’t believe them for months when they tell her Martha isn’t an alien.

“But she can drive the bloody space ship,” Donna exclaims. “How would she know how to drive it if-“

“And I know aliens who can drive cars, Donna, that argument isn’t relevant!” the Doctor bickers back. “I taught her, and if you’re good, maybe I’ll teach you, too.”

Martha is adamant Donna should never be left in a position where she can drive the Tardis.

She helps save the world from Sontarans, keeps him from rattling apart after his voice is stolen on Midnight, and falls asleep holding him the night after his one and only day with his daughter.

The stars go out and the Earth gets misplaced and then put back and, for a moment there, there is everyone. Rose and Jack and Donna and Martha, even Sarah Jane Smith and Jackie and Mickey, but then there is just the Doctor and Martha.

“Will Donna be okay?” Martha asks.

“Oh, yes,” the Doctor nods. “Just. No more space and time for her. No more Doctor.”

“And will you be okay?” she grabs his hand.

The Doctor smiles. “I’m always alright, me.”

He gets years with her. They save civilizations and have picnics on the moon. They spend a month in some war camp on the outer edge of the universe being Doctors and doctors both. Martha keeps him honest, keeps him good.

But see, the Doctor is still afraid of death.

They defeat the Master a second time, him and Martha. The Time Lords disappear, and there is only the Doctor, Martha, and an old man in a radiation filled room.

Wilf lives to see another day, but Martha does not.

All it took was one moment of hesitation, the fear and the anger at a death he could not cheat, and Martha was pulling him back, pulling him into a kiss, and then she was setting Wilf free and –

“This isn’t right,” the Doctor mutters, hunched over her body and tears streaking his face. Wilf hovers, but he does not understand. “This isn’t right!”

“Do you want to try again?”

The Doctor turns to see the bespectacled man again, looking more remorseful than he ever had.

“Will I get it right?” the Doctor cries. “Will it save anyone if I do?”

“You can always get it right,” the man’s voice is earnest and kind. “You always, always can, Doctor.”

“Was I cruel to her?” the Doctor asks, looking down at the face of the bravest woman he’d ever known.

The other man closes his eyes. “You can always try again. You can always get it right.”

The problem, see, is that mortals have a bad habit of being mortal, and time has a bad habit fixing what’s already been fixed.

This is the one where Donna stays and they are so similar, her and the Doctor. She becomes the Doctor Donna and the Doctor loses her within weeks of the transformation.

This is the one where Mickey Smith stays and he travels for a decade with him until he gets himself thrown off of the tallest building on Alpha Centari.

This is the one where River stays and her timeline gets ripped apart at the seams.

This is the one where Wilf stays and has a heart attack after three years.

This is the one where Nancy stays and dies and

Sally Sparrow stays and dies and

Sarah Jane Smith and

Madame de Pompadour and

Jenny and

They all die. They all die and the Doctor feels his heart break over and over and he can’t keep doing this he can’t he can’t-

“More time?”

“Why are you doing this?” the Doctor screams, clutching Astrid who didn’t die on the Titanic but three weeks later on the planet Ra’aelfa. “This is torture! You keep telling me I can fix it but they keep dying! Why do they keep dying? Who are you? Why are you doing this to me?”

“Now, Doctor,” the small man frowns. “You can fix this. You can save them.”

“But what will it take from me?” the Doctor sobs. “What will it take?”

The small man adjusts his glasses. “More time.”

He can’t keep doing this.

This is the one where Jack Harkness stays.

Well, first he leaves, that makes it different. In fact, with him, this becomes a story of leaving.

The Doctor left him on Satellite 9, newly immortal and confused as hell. Then Jack left the Doctor after the year that wasn’t, going back to his precious team for a few years before shit hits the fan. He came back for the misplacement of the world, and then he’s gone again for a few years.

He comes back with fire, the next time.

One moment, the Doctor is wandering through the mid-21st century Germany looking for a very angry Zygon, and the next he’s being shoved by a very angry Jack Harkness.

“Where the hell have _you_ been?” he spits.

_“ What_?” the Doctor squints at him, not quite believing his eyes that Jack Harkness was stood in front of him.

“Where have you _been_?” Jack shoves him again.

“Captain –“

“Ianto is dead. My grandchild is dead. My _team_ is dead, Doctor, and you didn’t do shit-“

The Doctor’s face drops. “I’m sorry, Jack, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know–“

And Jack punches him in the middle of Munich. He falls, caught by surprise, and stares up at Jack with big, confused eyes.

“Go to hell, Doctor,” Jack hisses, and storms off. The crowds of Munich swallow him in seconds.

And fate has a thing with the Doctor, as it turns out, and so they continue to meet and fight and leave. Late 22nd century Mars, mid 24th century Vega, early 29th century Haila. Jack is still fire and rage with every meeting, but it dwindles as time goes on. On the eve of 3200, the Doctor runs into Jack two minutes before midnight. Jack yells at him for two minutes and fifty nine seconds, and as New Years day is chimed in he kisses the Doctor with all the rage and sorrow and teeth that he has and then he’s gone again.

On one of the moons of Gerito, The Doctor sits at the counter in a diner, snacking on some equivalent of coffee cake. Jack appears out of nowhere, seemingly, sitting beside him and stealing his cup of coffee, sipping the brew as though it were his to begin with.

“Taking it out on my coffee, then?” the Doctor asks, bewildered and preparing himself for anything from a physical attack to some offensive lewd suggestion.

Jack barely even looks at him. “How many people have you traveled with since Donna?”

The Doctor stares. “None. Not for any more than a ride home.”

Jack gives him a cocky grin that is a little too sad to be convincing. “So it sounds like there’s an opening?”

And so Jack stays. They save a bus that gets transported to a new world, defeat the Master again, this time with Jack stepping into the radioactive cage. He’s sick for the next week, the radiation poisoning killing him a handful of times before he’s back to normal.

And there is a new normal now. Normal quiet moments, with the Doctor and Jack holed up in the library reading on their favorite couch, with the two of them working steadily on the Tardis with few words passed between them. Normal sleepy moments, with the Doctor handing Jack freshly brewed coffee as he pads into the control room in the morning, with Jack dragging the Timelord to bed and falling asleep with his head over one heart and his palm over the other. Normal angry moments, with two flawed beings screaming at the other for their flawed views of mercy, with old wounds torn open every time Jack feels the Doctor pulling away. Normal sad moments, because neither are immortal, per say, but neither are mortal, and isn’t that tragedy enough?

Then there is the not so normal, where between saving some pirates from an alien and their normal post-heroics ritual of tea and teasing, the Doctor takes Jacks hand and studies it for a moment.

“No black dot, Doctor, if that’s what you’re looking for,” Jack says hesitantly, noting the edge of the moment.

“Right, of course,” the Doctor smiles, looking at Jack with something new, something, well, frightening, but good. He doesn’t let go of Jack’s hand.

Holding hands becomes a new normal.

The not so normal, like the Doctor finding himself under the mistletoe after the Christmas adventure with the flying fish and the singing beauty. Jack finds himself there, too. The Doctor laughs but gives as good as he gets when Jack winds his fingers through the short hairs at the back of the Doctor’s neck and pulls him into a telling kiss. The Doctor thinks of New Years 3200.

When they board the Tardis again that evening, the Doctor crowds him against the console and kisses him again, gripping the lapels of his jacket and letting the kiss linger. Jack isn’t sure who pulls away first, but neither goes far, the Doctor still practically leaning against Jack who is just about sat on the controls.

“This isn’t a goodbye kiss, right?” Jack can’t help but ask, voice quiet.

The Doctor leans his forehead against Jack’s own. “I’m afraid I’ve been rather cruel to you, Jack.”

“Docto-“

“If you’ll stay – if you’d like to stay, that is, then I can promise you, Jack Harkness, I will never be the one to give the goodbye kiss.”

And kissing becomes a new normal.

And the years go by.

There are normal jealous moments, with the Doctor scoffing at every habitual flirt from Jack’s mouth, with every young pretty stray that the Doctor wants to bring on board.

Decades go by.

Normal fun moments, with dates on new worlds that show no signs of ending, with a Timelord and a 51st century man finding all sorts of new things to make the other tick.

Centuries.

“I love you.”

Jack laughs. “I didn’t know you could even say that.”

“Oi!”

Thousands of years.

He starts losing time.

There is a hotel with a minotaur. There is a door marked with a Ten. This was his door.

The Doctor couldn’t help but open it.

Behind is a man curled in a corner. He has a young face, long brown hair styled into a curl, and bow tie. He leans his head back against the wall, smiling at the Doctor in an almost irritated fashion. Beside him lays a metal cylindrical thing – a sonic screwdriver –

Oh.

He’s waiting.

The Doctor slides the door shut.

The next day, he thinks he sees a little girl with bright orange hair running down the corridors of the Tardis. He chases her for ten minutes before running into Jack who helps him with a full sweep of the ship. The sensors state there was never anyone there in the first place.

He dreams of an archeologist – the woman from the Library? – and thinks he hears her somewhere in the Tardis’s library the next day. He holds a full conversation with her before realizing she was never there at all.

He daydreams about a Scottish accent, a spark of a woman, who mourns the loss of Van Gough. He starts seeing her everywhere, he thinks. He spends an hour trying to figure out if she remembers Rory yet or not. He starts drawing cracks on all the sticky notes Jack leaves lying around.

He panics when he finds a redheaded little girl on the battle fields of some alien planet. He starts screaming a name, “Amy”, and crumples next to her form, muttering “Not this time no no please”.

Jack holds him through a panic attack when someone calls him a clever boy. He dreams of a girl who gives too many hugs and makes too many souffles. He begs her to stay. He begs her to believe it’s him. He begs her to let him save her.

Jack worries.

“Sometimes you just… go.”

“Go where?” the Doctor smiles at Jack breezily.

“Don’t know.”

“Well, love, neither do I.”

He knows everything has a time.

Jack is afraid, the Doctor can tell. He doesn’t know what to make of the Doctor’s sudden panics and figments. He doesn’t know half the names that fill his mouth anymore. He doesn’t know how many more times he can tell him that Gallifrey is gone.

See, this is the one where Jack stays.

But this is the one where the Doctor leaves.

Jack wakes up in the morning to find the Doctor gone. He rushes from their bedroom, darting down the corridors to the control room. He doesn’t know what he’s expecting, but he’s expecting something bad.

The Doctor is kneeling before the Tardis doors. Crying. Begging, Jack realizes.

“Please. Let me try again. Please. I’m going to break his heart, I’m going to break his heart…”

Jack stays hidden behind one of the coral struts.

“The next one, the next me, he isn’t me. He isn’t anything like me. He forgets. He represses. He moves on. He acts kind, but he’s the cruelest of us. He’s – he’s a _child_ , he’s-“

The Doctor stares at a fixed point near the Tardis door.

“You said I could get it right.”

Jack feels tears come to his eyes.

“More time. More time. You promised –“

The Doctor sobs.

“You said I could fix this! I could save them!”

He bangs his fists against the ground.

“Why are you doing this to me?”

He grabs at his hair. He pulls at it.

“I just wanted –“

He sobs. Jack goes to him, wraps him in his arms.

“You know how the saying goes, don’t you?” the man looks sad.

“What saying is that?”

“If you love them, let them go.”

The Doctor laughs coldly.

“Do you want to try again?”

The Doctor ignores the Tardis’s screams and confusion as he takes her into the vortex, leaving Jack behind in 4213 New York.

“Once more.”

He did not kiss him goodbye.

This is the one where the Doctor stays.

He sorts through the goodbyes, radiation destroying him from the outside in. He saves Martha, saves Mickey and Sarah Jane’s son, he slides a note to Jack, and then he is in the snow on the eve of 2005 watching Rose Tyler smile wide and poke fun.

The Tardis worries as he stumbles back in. Gold flickers about him, cells dying and being replaced already. He knows – he knows he will never see any of them again, somehow.

It hurts.

The man in the corner with the glasses and the small stature and the balding head - the Doctor ignores him. He knows more time won’t help.

He brings the Tardis into the vortex, pain rippling through him.

_I will not ask for more time._

He steps back, tears gathering in his eyes. The man in the corner nods and disappears.

A sob bubbles in the Doctor’s throat.

“I don’t want to go.”

And then there is a vacant hotel room in a faraway world.

**Author's Note:**

> come scream with me on tumblr @tripleforte


End file.
